• rockSlayer@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I don’t understand your point. The most important feature of capitalism is the private ownership of capital. Capitalism isn’t “hustle, fuck bitches get money” or whatever. Money and wage labor goes back to the founding of civilization. It isn’t a new invention.

    • ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      So did private ownership

      That wasn’t what Capitalism was about

      In the wealth of nations Smith talks great lengths about the labourer being king of the market not the landowners and that with advancement in technology costs should go down except land owners prevent that

      The whole system is supposed to favour the labourer compared to Mercantilism where the rich got richer because they owned the production

      It also praised the American colonies for open immigration saying they could double their population faster than anyone in Europe and that would double their economy

      • Haagel@lemmings.world
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        1 year ago

        I think one of the main problems with Smith’s conception of capitalism is that he didn’t account for how huge and pervasive and intrusive advertising would become. He naively assumed that the best product would dominate the market when actually people will buy whatever is thrust in front of the their eyes a thousand times a day.

        And of course corporate lobbying wasn’t such an issue in his time.

        • ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca
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          1 year ago

          We have term limits for governments but not for corporations

          Their ability to last indefinitely allows them more control than anyone thought possible

          And no matter what system you choose; they will act in self interest that will allow them to expand/erode the system to benefit themselves

          • rockSlayer@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            And we know now that his analysis on the outcome of capitalism is incorrect. Capitalism exists for the private property holders to extract as much wealth and power as possible from their privileged position. That unrelenting pursuit of profit has led to even worse inequality, and is collapsing entire ecosystems. It’s a disaster of an economic system full of contradictions. Those contradictions are now causing capitalism to collapse in on itself.

            • ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca
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              1 year ago

              So you realize that the problems with capitalism are what it set out to prevent

              That doesn’t make the core of capitalism the opposite

              That means it’s not true capitalism

              The problem is greed that will exist in any system because people with power will degrade/morph any system to be self serving